Warm In My Hand
by sandsdream
Summary: Mr. Todd polishes his razors, and Mrs. Lovett is struck with a peculiar idea as she watches from behind the safety of a door. One-sided Sweeney/Lovett, or Sweeney/Lovett/razor. My personal favorite of my Sweeney Todd fics. Written in March 2008.


She was thoroughly sick and tired of that sound. _Scrape, scrape, scrape._ Every bleedin' day, Sweeney Todd insisted on getting that strop out and sharpening one of his precious razors. Then he'd polish it. Then he'd look at it a moment, critically sizing up his handiwork, turning his hand this way and that, flicking his wrist to one side, dipping his arm slightly in the other direction, as he watched the light play off the blade until he could be certain that it had been sufficiently polished and cared for.

And then, oftentimes, he would touch the fingertips of his other hand to the blade, running them up and down, sometimes in long, smooth strokes, and sometimes in short, quick ones.

What purpose that could possibly serve, she couldn't imagine. Nevertheless, it always seemed to keep him completely absorbed.

Mrs. Lovett was standing outside the door of his shop, as usual, peering in but too timid to knock. Not while he was attending to his instruments. She felt a slight unease at the thought of barging in at that moment. Better to wait. She would enter at a moment when he was unoccupied.

She had seen him kill a man once, and only once. And while his twisted face as he performed the deed had sent a chill though her, frightened her, made her nearly want to avert her eyes (away from his expression, not from the actual killing)…something about it made her tingle. She wanted to go to him, as much as she simultaneously wanted to run in the opposite direction. She wanted him to react to her with that much feeling. It electrified her, in ways both very good and very bad, to see him look that alive and overwrought. _Deliciously overwrought. _His nose would scrunch up and he would bare his teeth and….Chaos would storm across his face for the very brief instant it took him to bleed someone's life away, and then, his face would become placid once again. Usually he responded to Mrs. Lovett's presence, and her comments and her suggestions, with no emotion or reaction at all; but _this_…this brought out something very special in him.

Although, the more times he did it, the less frantic and distressed he looked each time. The act of it seemed to affect him less and less. Just like everything.

_Except_, it occurred to her, _those razors_. His friends. His ardor for them, his fascination with simply holding them, had never weakened.

Recalling that single time she had witnessed one of his private executions, Mrs. Lovett continued to stand outside, looking in and waiting. Waiting as he polished and handled his razors.

Although she did not enter, neither did she leave. For some reason, the fluid motions of hands transfixed her. They kept her entranced, kept her feet rooted to the spot just outside his door, kept her nose pressed to the bluish glass in a most undignified manner.

For some reason, when he slid his first finger down the flat of the blade, very lightly, she shivered. When the back of his hand glided over it, her skin tingled, as if her bare shoulders had just been touched by a light breeze. He stroked both sides of it with his fingers and his thumb, and a little jolt went through her, starting in her chest and landing sharply in the pit of her stomach.

He let the blade lie open across his palm for a moment before he folded it back, with a soft _shikk_, too soft for her to hear.

He gripped his fingers around it experimentally, as if he had never held it before. The weight of it in his hand—comfortable, familiar, the curve of it settling snugly into every curve his palm, under his fingers, safe in his tightly closed fist. Mrs. Lovett pressed herself against the door, pressed her hands to the window pane, never taking her eyes off him.

Then, inexplicably, he flipped it open once more, frowning at the silver, as if discovering a blemish that he had somehow previously overlooked. Shrugging off his jacket, he held out one arm, baring his shirtsleeve. He wiped the flat of the blade across the back of his forearm, across the fabric, as if to polish it further.

With each stroke he was pulling, pulling her, pulling her into the door, pulling her closer, pulling her through the wood and glass until she felt as though she truly was in the room with him, close enough to breathe down his neck rather than merely clouding up the pane. With each brush of it against his sleeve he was pulling her, pulling her to him, pulling her into his arms.

But no one knew.

And when he abruptly stopped, satisfied at last with his ministrations, and swung the arm that held the razor in one swift, quick, outward arc, letting it slice through the air—he was really pushing her down onto the floor and ravaging her lips, giving her mouth everything he had.

But he was inside the attic room and she was at least fifteen feet away, her presence unknown to him, outside the closed door.

No one else knew. Anyone could plainly see that his hands were still occupied with the razor. She could feel it all, though, and _she_ knew. She knew every bit of it.

She could be dangerous, lethal…dismembering corpses, disposing of bodies in a manner such that no one could ever hope to trace them, neatly covering up every bit of his crimes. And it had all been her own brilliant idea, after all. She could be sharp, a honed instrument—_if you only knew, Mr. Todd_….

He ran his finger along the edge of the blade, knowing it so well, intimate with every detail of it so that he never once got cut—and it was his finger running down her shoulderblade.

With every stroke of the razor, he was caressing _her_. As he moved and breathed and touched the smooth metal, as she watched and knew, it was her own skin beneath his hands.

…He just didn't know it yet.


End file.
